


Reign

by octobertown



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Biting, Cunnilingus, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Fake Dick, Foreplay, Grey Jedi, Hurt/Comfort, Light Dom/sub, Maulsoka, Smut, Submission Choking (Light), Surprise Dick, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:35:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25393969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octobertown/pseuds/octobertown
Summary: Snatched from her free fall escape, Ahsoka finds herself in the unwilling company of a fellow-fugitive of the Empire, Maul, aboard the very shuttle he’d only just stole out from under her. A change of hearts might’ve saved her life, but a difference of opinion leaves tensions screaming in the aftermath of Order 66. What might emerge from this new alliance as the path ahead becomes less discerned — adversaries become allies, the broken struggle to become whole, and those unlikely companions whose animosity forges new bonds through strife, perhaps, light a beacon for themselves against the rising tide of the Dark Side, together.(LOOOOL J/K: It’s smut with something that resembles a plausible intro to convince myself this could have happened. Maulsoka, because wth.)
Relationships: Darth Maul/Ahsoka Tano
Comments: 25
Kudos: 133
Collections: Maulsoka Fanfic Writers (Discord), Star Wars Multishippers





	Reign

**Author's Note:**

> Ahsoka's aged past 18 in this fic (she might be older, in fact, because we're time skipping but just HOW much time has passed is up for debate). With 18 being the age of legal majority in my country, suffice to say she's an adult. She can drink AND fuck, but this fic only deals with the latter, and obviously a smattering of what it means to "fall" without bandying about any l-words. Although -- if I ever DID write a sequel to this wee one-shot, that'd be a solid follow-up to work towards. 
> 
> I very deliberately riffed on a line from Fight Club, "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything," which, I think, while a just a tad nihilistic, works for Maul and might be a good fulcrum point for how Ahsoka could think about things given this particular situation. 
> 
> OK BAI. GO READ MY DIRTY WORDS NAOW.
> 
> \- october

She was still searching for Rex as they broke atmo. With her teeth grit, her face pressed to the transparisteel -- Maul said nothing of her capture, hardly pausing to force her back into the copilot seat behind him with a shove strong enough to make Ahsoka's teeth rattle. She fought, of course — her grim resolve to fight him broke only when Maul pushed the ship into lightspeed, and that said nothing of the fact that the first words he said to her in their shared aftermath were, “I might’ve let you fall." She couldn’t find it in her to scream as the Destroyer sank beneath the clouds in pieces.

He said nothing of his change of hearts, hammering coordinates unknown into the controls with barely a glance.

Darkness thrummed, the Force shuddering with so much death.

Maul glanced back only once as Ahsoka shrank into it; the pieces of the puzzle uncertain, overwhelm from sensation fracturing but still manageable.

“Why did you catch me?”

She’d expected Rex. She’d raced after him, bounding from ship to cruiser to ship, racing to intercept his commandeered vessel —

One moment, she’d been atop Rex’s craft; the next there was only empty air, the plummet, and Maul rising to snatch her from her descent.

He hadn’t given her a choice but to clamber into the cockpit with him.

There’d been no one else.

Maul glared — a brief spike of hostility wrenching him back to the controls.

The Dark Side swelled, then — the press of shadows on the mind unspeakably strong. Visions. Voices. Echoes. Ghosts. All lost. All fading.

“I’d not waste such a worthy adversary for pride, Lady Tano.”

It occurred to her that he hadn’t answered the question.

Maul’s explanation went unheard beneath the tumult in the Force, and then there was only the breadth of absence. Silence.

Pain in the Force -- so many voices quieted at once.

A cold and empty chasm remained that knew only grave consequences for the Order. Her friends. Her allies. She didn’t understand, but it was a time before she rose, alone, uncertain of how long she spent staring, shuttered in her own mind — not in meditation, but in grief.

Confused, she recognized only that she’d been spared, somehow.

Ahsoka found her companion dour and silent, enshrouded in his own brooding contemplation, unmoved from behind the controls now set to course to a destination he had not disclosed. The gleam of his eyes in the dark followed her to the nest of blankets he’d tossed in one of the lowest bunks, watching her as she rolled into them, gathering them to her in the chill, not asking where they were going. Not talking at all.

Not yet.

—

She slept in fits and starts, a complicated miasma of memory and sense impression intermingling, driving her to wakefulness in bursts that left her disoriented.

In dreams, the bodies of her friends regarded her with betrayal in their eyes: decaying in her hands when she tried to grasp at them; to hold on.

Waking in a sweat, shouting into unfamiliar surrounds, rising to consciousness was a sticky affair that had her retching over the side of mattress. Lingering wisps echoed memories that bled through the Force; none were hers:

A flower-filled coffin. The screams of the newly-born.

Shadows and durasteel and blistered, cauterized flesh.

Nightmares.

Horrors.

On the third night, she found Maul seated against the supply crates opposite her bunk, glowering at her with a strange light in his eyes.

“You screamed his name again.”

There was a certain wonderment to it.

“How strong the bond between master and Padawan that even once severed, one might experience the other’s pains.”

She shivered, her sweat gluing her to her sheets, the scent of sulfur still burning her lungs with each heaving breath.

Scorched earth and blistered skin.

Unreal. Impossible fragments of a lingering nightmare.

Her Master was gone, but the thought echoed.

Maul must have seen it in her eyes — such unfettered fear. Her confusion gave substance to her dreams, making them feel realer than they might be.

Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that not all was as it was —

“Or perhaps one might endeavour to shutter themselves from such things, for their sanity as well as their travelling companions.”

She couldn’t force the words out, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth as it was: _I’m not your companion._

“You are but the fractured remains of a fallen age,” he told her. “There is pain in this. You might not embrace it, but it is clarifying. Of that I promise you.”

He said nothing of healing. Her chest tightened, and not for the first time, she found herself vulnerable before him: made small by forces out of her control.

“One might bury what remains and begin again, if it better suited the purposes of the path they find themselves on. It diverges, you see. And often.” He scrutinized her. “It’s a fool’s errand to carry such failures like a mantle. Such a weight will only slow you down.”

But he didn’t afford her the opportunity to protest aloud, clambering to his feet and staring down at her with a long, searching frown — his position lending to his thrumming power in such small confines. The Dark Side beat against her, and shaking, Ahsoka found herself scrabbling for some semblance of defence as Maul eased into the compartment opposite, settling in to meditate, his arm for a pillow.

A distant part of her mind recognized the ripple of power that was wholly physical — foreign lines where his tunic fell away to reveal the hard planes of his chest. Like a carving rendered from stone. A sculpture.

“Breathe, Lady Tano,” he muttered. “Breathe, for the descent is perilous.”

Eventually, she tore her eyes from him: muscles and markings and anger, her breathing thin, her thoughts scattered between the terrors that lingered whenever she shut her eyes and the Zabrak who encroached upon her unravelling.

She began, forcing rattling breaths through her nose, summoning the will to silence it all even as her fingers trembled.

Locked it away.

Pushed it down until nothing of those impressions remained but echoes.

“Breathe,” he murmured, his voice a soothing promise against the unfettered dread that rattled around her heart. “Because one might not rely on anyone else to buoy themselves up.”

She bit her lip, suppressing the urge to cry out; to sob.

“Breathe.”

The rise of his chest was achingly slow. If she turned her head to watch him, she could see how his body moved with it. Strange that the sound should make her hurt even more than she did. Strange that his Sith trainings should be so similar to her own.

Her face crumpled.

Maul’s chest rose.

Ahsoka pushed out a breath alongside him like it was her first time at the Jedi Temple, and Master Yoda was explaining the basics of the breath to the younglings; like she knew nothing at all now that all was lost. Like it had meant nothing at all.

His exhalation was slow. Steadying.

She puffed a breath of her own.

“Good,” he answered.

She shuddered on the inhale, but she managed it, the fog in her mind easing only a little.

“Good,” he murmured — little more than a rumble in his chest. Soothing. As comforting as a starless sky.

In the dark, she metered her breaths against Maul’s — shuddering at first, quaking with everything she tried to choke down, and only easing as she wrestled herself into quiet alongside him.

—

Nutrient packets left her hungry, but she ate despite an absent appetite. She slept for rotations, not knowing the paths Maul charted. Not entirely caring.

The day of her birth came and went without mention. It didn’t seem worth remarking on, and so when they dropped out of hyperspace for a turn, it was the blistering white of the planet below that finally roused her attention.

He settled back into his chair after they’d landed between the drifts, a knee propped against the dash, watching the hurtling snow through the cockpit’s windshield.

Trepidation broke her voice into further fractals, rasping after days of disuse. “Hoth system?”

Maul’s answering look left her dreading what waited in the snow.

A gesture towards the locker left her too curious not to investigate, but what she found there left her frowning — a sick sense of betrayal welling up as she extracted the cloak. Heavy. Woven with fibres meant to withstand the extreme cold.

What she endured in the nights notwithstanding, she supposed she was well enough physically. Still, she couldn’t explain why it stung as it did.

“Despite your best efforts, your strength in the Force abrades even the staunchest defences. Your efforts to occlude your thoughts has been admirable, but they remain… unquiet. Perhaps there are answers in the waste to quell those things that remain unsettled in you.”

Her throat worked, those unsullied moments of meditative silence between them all the more hopeless knowing that her failures were greater than either of them could afford.

They were not allies. They were not friends.

He’d never been helping her at all, and she’d been too entrenched in her despair to see it for herself:

He meant to leave her.

“You don’t have enough fuel for another jump.”

She meant it to be cruel: an obvious attempt to highlight that his efforts to ditch her at the earliest opportunity would spell his doom as well, but Maul’s frown only deepened.

Saying nothing, he engaged the ramp and waited for her to take a hint.

It looked as bad as Ilum out there, but if there was some poetic justice in knowing that Anakin died in flames as she suspected, she would freeze instead.

It was cruel how beautifully calculated Maul was.

She snatched at the cloak, pulling the deep hood over her montrals. Ahsoka descended without another glance behind her, her footsteps swallowed in the drifts as she tracked out into the vast expanse of icey white, not at all caring if she survived whatever awaited her.

She didn’t say goodbye.

The cold blasted through the cloak, a chill that cut through to the bone. Wincing into the sensation not her extremities prickling with numbness, she paused, squinting into the storm. Through the white curtain that drew across the planet’s surface, there remained something barely recognizable in the distance.

Figures, she thought at first — from the shoulders up. Unmoving. At attention, just like Troopers.

A glance over her shoulder revealed that Maul did not follow, nor did he raise the ramp against her, shutting her out in the cold.

She shrugged into herself and moved away from the ship, leaving behind the thrum of the Dark Side that so suffused their carriage these long days and nights.

Shielding herself at first, she clung to the dune drifts of snow, confident that by staying low she would remain undetected. There was no movement from the Troopers, and drawing closer, she saw why:

Only their helmets remained, set upon pikes to mark the mounds in the snow below.

Shallow graves, all of them, marked by her colours. Her boys.

She couldn’t be sure how long she stood there, the sense of loss absolute. A pointless waste. She might as well have been buried in their midst, for surely, some part of her had died over that moon along with the rest of them.

Sensing him closing in, she frowned at the patterns Maul cast on the backs of her eyelids when she finally felt his approach. He didn’t shield himself. He didn’t try to hide. His anger simmered, but the direction of it — Ahsoka couldn’t be certain.

He drew abreast of her, pausing at her shoulder only a moment as if in silent respect for the fallen. Uneasy silence veiled them, the cold making it too impossible to talk.

He surprised her, the heat of him invading her personal space but briefly.

“Release what no longer serves you, Lady Tano. Especially though it hurts.”

He withdrew as quickly, the cold gushing around her in the snow, her limbs tingling from his departure.

After a moment, only his shadow remained to offer her a path to follow into the ice-draped hangar beyond, if she wished it. If there was some guilt at the thought that he’d intended to leave her, she swallowed it back bitterly.

Everything she had been, everything she had worked for —

The hilt of her saber stuck to her fingertips as she removed it from her belt, breathless and aching.

Bury it, he’d said.

It fell from her fingers, the snow taking it, before she followed Maul’s footprints.

—

The new transport Maul had commandeered was big enough to fit a battalion of troops from the Imperial navy, and yet, with only the two of them on board, Ahsoka found there was barely enough room to avoid him.

Now that he’d begun speaking to her, it didn’t appear that Maul was inclined to stop. Even if she didn’t deign to respond half the time.

From the command chair, he gave her yet another sidelong glance, leaving her to bristle at the attention.

“You’re angry.”

She had cause to _be_ angry.

“Anger is an exceptional catalyst, you’ll find — it drives one to greater heights, even if one might not deign to stoop to such particular teachings.”

“I can’t lie to you, can I?” She muttered after a stretch, side-eyeing him herself.

A small smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth, shrewdness veiling some obscure motive in the direction of the conversation. Baiting her, probably. It prickled, which was odd — she’d never thought she’d have been grateful to feel something other than desperate numbness, even if it was low-grade hostility.

“Not if you continue to bleed through those shields, Lady.”

She frowned. “Why do you keep calling me that?”

That amused him. “I afford only the grace that is warranted, Lady Tano. You’ve proven yourself a skilled warrior on more than one occasion, nearly besting me twice, and were it not for only the rarest lapse in sentimentally colouring your choices, I’d still bestow you the honorific.” He set the controls to make their next jump, and settled back to regard her. “I honour you with the title because you’ve earned the respect,” he explained, slowly. “Mine.”

“I’m not a lady,” she countered, but it still sounded petulant.

He paused. “But wouldn’t you like to reign?”

She forced her fists to uncoil, smoothing down her legs as she looked anywhere but at him — the weight of his appraisal turning her insides molten.

“I don’t —”

“Think about it,” he interrupted.

Something ticked in the hull.

“Especially when the alternative is that you _serve_.”

“It doesn’t surprise me that you think that way. I don’t think the way is so black and white.”

“Ah, the mythic middle road. Notoriously more challenging to walk than either alternative.”

She frowned. “Why?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Balance, of course. An ideal to strive towards surely, but oh so elusive when one preoccupies themselves so thoroughly with the light —”

“I don’t —” she started.

“No, my Lady. Because you are no Jedi.” He sneered, standing. Sitting below him as she was, she couldn’t help but bristle. “Not any longer.”

Rising, she stared him down a beat longer than necessary as if his mockery warranted righteous retaliation. She wondered if she had it in her for another fight.

“I trust in the Force,” she said evenly.

Maul searched her expression, the air between them prickling as if he could test the tension between them.

“But you must blame _someone_ for how it’s all unravelled,” he mused.

Her insides shrank, as if the shame of her failures could knot themselves into the lump in her throat and the thickness in her chest; as if she might choke on the despair.

He muttered, “Only a fool would trust himself to drift in such subtle currents. Either you forsake the Force, or the Force forsakes you.” He turned those yellow eyes onto her. “It makes victims of us all, left us to drown in the waves of a vast and empty ocean, batting us about at its whims.”

She bristled at the challenge in his expression.

“ _You_ intervened,” she shot at him. “I might’ve _died_.”

He rolled his eyes. _Rolled_ them.

She bat around, waiting for some explanation as to why he’d snatch her mid-descent when she might as well have been one less complication for him to deal with. Surely he had a reason for it — surely there was some better explanation that they found themselves so conjoined. Rationality defied her better senses, and yet — she still stood before him on the same kriffing ship.

He ignored the dig for information. His mental walls were a fortress she could not breach.

“Only a Jedi would sacrifice themselves thusly,” he finished. “Only a Jedi would give themselves over it so willingly.”

Any efforts to sense for herself the truth in her words met with the recoil of former understanding. To open herself to the chasm that awaited her beyond the transparisteel and streaks of starlight surely meant enduring the crush of that vast, empty dark — bereft of the voices that once occupied it.

She couldn’t stand it — that silence.

A small smile played around Maul’s mouth as he goaded her. If he noted the marks left by her fingernails where she gripped her upper arms, he made no comment. Perhaps the knowledge that she’d shut herself off from the Force was enough —

“Are you screaming behind those walls you’ve erected, my lady?” He asked. “I cannot feel you in the Force, but I sense your turbulent soul yearns to lash and flay — the unrest of one whose despair might succumb to the breadth of their anger, once and for all.”

He rose, drawing himself straight and proud and predatory, so assured that he was right in his estimation that he might press his advantage.

“Don’t,” she warned.

A small smile played around his mouth. He lidded his eyes, snuffing a noise of satisfaction as he regarded her: the tumult of his emotions stirring the currents between them, tickling her lekku as if in warning.

“Your fall will be something to behold, I am certain.”

“The Dark Side has no sway with me, Maul.”

“Even now?” He pressed, as if she didn’t believe her own lie. “Even after you’ve lost everything?”

He dared take another step, looming before her as she narrowed her eyes at him.

Her traitorous heart quickened its beat.

“Oh, but you have such reasons to despair.” His smile was edged with poison. “For who are we once released from such trappings as our beliefs?”

Her throat constricted with unsaid things.

She managed, “I haven’t been part of the Order for some time.”

“But the Jedi will remain part of you, always.” He bared his teeth in a cruel grin. “As the ideals of the Sith have shaped me. One might shake off the trappings, but those lessons will cling like shadows at our heels — forever dogging our footsteps, unless we elect to choose to escape down a different path. You fear what you’ve been taught.”

The heat of him surrounded her, his confidence a wavering heat that bore down on her body, her limbs shaking with the effort to remain rooted; to remain stoic against the onslaught of the truth he offered.

He knew, too, that she’d left her lightsaber on Hoth — buried with her clones like the past. She’d tried —

She’d tried. But the weight of failure still drew her shoulders down.

His hand hovered beneath her chin, the warmth from his fingers tickling close but not touching. She pulled away, and in doing so, met his stare.

“I’m not afraid,” she said — of the Dark Side. Of him.

But she feared for all that was lost.

What was freedom, then, but to shed expectations; to lose one’s ideals?

“Would such an escape be so abhorrent?” he asked, dropping his hand.

She set her teeth, staring, unwilling to blink lest she lose sight of him.

Her eyes burned.

“I am nothing like you.” She cleared her throat of the quaver in her voice.

A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth, and unwilling, her gaze darted to the small movement. Lingering there only a beat, she tore her gaze away from the angles of his jaw, his cheeks, and back to the lurid fire smouldering in his gaze.

“Ah,” he breathed, and the scent of his body filled her mouth: musk-sweet and dusty, an undertone of spice. “We are everything alike — now.”

Another inch and his flesh might brush the skin of her arms. Unable to draw away lest he gain ground on her, Ahsoka faced him fully, tilting her chin to glower up at him.

His gaze lidded. “Only after you’ve lost everything are you free to do anything.”

She wasn’t, though — not when so many were dead.

Maul tipped his head, his brow furrowing as if he’d expected more from her and she’d disappointed him.

“You don’t believe me, and yet you refuse to reach out with your feelings and determine the truth for yourself.”

She wasn’t angry. Not yet. Tension ticked in her jaw, a small pounding in her temples making the confines restrictive, all of a sudden.

It was easier, perhaps, to choose to feel nothing at all when there was so much suffering all at once. Only the echoes left behind in the Force — the ache of absence so impossible and deep she might not ever feel it filled.

“Then let me assure you —” He hovered, his breath tickling her cheeks as he took her in. “Everything you once knew as harbour; that once offered the security to return to if you had only wished — is gone. Wiped away as swiftly as with the tide.” He murmured, mocking, “ _Such_ is the will of the Force.”

She took a step backward, the concession of her space an afterthought, even though he lingered. With heavy limbs, she allowed her hips to sink to the console, resting a moment in brooding contemplation.

“It’s not the time to fight,” she said. “I can’t —” her voice broke.

“Is that guilt I sense, my Lady?”

She didn’t meet his gaze.

“A funny thing, for certain — that we should dwell on the choices that shifted the course of things. No matter. Remorse shapes one’s destiny as much as courage. A lesson better learned with hindsight, perhaps.”

“You have no right to mock me. We’ve both lost.”

“And yet,” he breathed, “ _we_ endure.”

Glaring, she shoved off her perch.

She didn’t bother asking Maul at what cost as she made to brush past him. She knew the tally: the lives of her friends, the lives of the Jedi, the order of the galaxy as they knew it.

His hand shot out, clasping her at the wrist as she made to move past him. The force of it had her spinning into him, fighting already to be released. Baring her teeth, she snarled, “I will give you one warning. Let me go.”

“Running from the past does not negate that it happened.” His eyes burned. Leaning into her, he demanded, “Did I not offer you what truths I could? Yet here and now you still seem to find me at fault in all things. Your anger is misdirected, Lady Tano — I’ve only offered every solution that you’ve rejected.”

“In your own interest —” she countered.

“None of this —“ he waved at their ramshackle transport, the vast nothing of space beyond. “Is by my design. It’s _yours_.”

His intervention changed her course. Her choices kept her steady, but they also kept them by his side.

“You’re a war criminal —”

“And you were a foolish child. Together we might’ve destroyed Darth Sidious, but your refusal to see beyond the veil of a dead order’s ideologies brought its ruin —”

“You threatened my Master. I would _never_ have joined you —”

He wrenched her closer, and Ahsoka reached for the lightsaber she no longer wore at her hip. “Your naive idealism has been your weakness.”

“You expected me to trust you at face value —”

“I expected you to trust in your instincts.”

That struck heavier than it should have. She turned away, her face heating.

He loosened his grip a fraction.

She wrung her arm from his grasp.

He straightened, imperious. A glance at the controls only deepened his frown.

She tore her gaze from his face, following his attention.

There were at least three rotations between them at the nearest habitable star. This far out into the Outer Rim, she couldn’t be certain of their destination, only her intention to shed his company as soon as possible. It wouldn’t be prudent for them to journey together. Together, they made too great a target for the Imperial guard that was surely, by this time, spreading from the core worlds and into the reaches to stamp out any last remaining Force users they came across.

Seeming to sense the direction of her thoughts, Maul leaned in, eyes alight with some predatory fire. “Ah, so she sees that she too is a ‘war criminal’ of the Empire. The old, built over by the new. My my, how times change.”

Ahsoka gripped her flesh where he’d grasped her, rubbing the feeling of his touch from her skin with a vehemence.

“Stay out of my head.”

To her, even, it sounded weak.

Gentler, this time, he touched her elbow with his fingertips. Soft enough to be unsettling, she started before he could crowd her back into the dash.

“We are fortune-full, the few to survive. My condolences for your losses, Lady —”

When he withdrew, it left her stunned only a moment, ringing in the silence of his departure as he retreated into the shadows to veil himself.

His voice trailed after her. “But I would not allow you to succumb to such cruel ends.”

“What?” she said after him, frowning.

What left her thrumming, fingers gripped to the console, was the look that passed over his features. True, she had shielded herself from the Force. She’d forsaken her sabre in a final effort to destroy the bridge between her and the Jedi once and for all. And if she could have cauterize the fragments of her broken heart, she would have found just cause if she didn’t want the reminder of why she was running towards oblivion rather than from it —

“I am but a grasping hand, my lady. Would that you could tell the difference from being pushed down so ardently by the Jedi.”

Her eyes stung a moment, but it was not because of any of those things she mourned. Rather, it was the knowledge that the sympathy he offered rang sincere for once.

Or perhaps, for once, she had truly listened when Maul spoke.

“Maul,” she croaked after him.

The clang of his retreat slowed to a halt. In the darkness, he turned his profile towards her — pausing in his haste to offer what little space he could.

Ahsoka cleared her throat.

Tremulous, uncertain, her voice was less than a breath. She tried again, “Thank you. For saving me.”

It lacked the strength of her certainties, because truly, nothing was certain anymore. Nothing save for the fact that the demure nod he offered in return was weighted with a resilience she herself didn’t know, but thought she might find after all things if she allowed herself to be shown how.

“One should not brood on what was in such changeable times. One might only find a foothold to extricate themselves from the past if they fumble for it enough.” He gestured. “Blind in the dark.”

A small smile threatened. She tucked her chin into her chest before he could see it, not knowing what might follow if she allowed the feeling through.

“There are other recourses, of course,” he added lightly.

Something suggested that the shift in his tone brooked nothing but regrets for later.

She sniffed. “You’re going to enlighten me, aren’t you.”

He smoothed his hands down his front, taking a moment to examine his gloves.

Maul frowned, stepping back into the light where she could see him better: offering the very thing that might’ve turned the tide to begin with:

His hand, palm up, fingers softened in invitation.

Offering her a single-shouldered shrug, he said, “We might struggle on our own for a stretch, but those unknown adversities are only terrors if we walk the path alone. They do not demand a choice in how we place our feet, only that we take the necessary steps towards survival.”

She stared at his fingers.

“The Force does not dictate how we defy the alignment of the stars we find ourselves suffering under.”

Something ticked in the hull. Her heart hammered as he waited for her to realize that the choice he offered was not a choice at all.

She schooled her expression to keep from crumpling.

“Nor the complexity of one’s character,” he murmured.

“I —” Her voice cracked. She paused, summoning what little strength she had left. “I would rather —“

He waited, ever patient.

She already knew the answer to the question.

Rolling her eyes to the ceiling, she huffed a breath. Steadied herself as she stood to full height.

“I would rather fight,” she admitted.

Maul returned, and hopelessly, she slapped at his palm. He caught her hand, drawing her off the dash, holding it with an insistence that felt at once foreign and impossible. When she tried to withdraw, he held firm.

Something wicked danced in his gaze.

“As we did on Mandalore, or...?”

She couldn’t explain why it set her heartbeat as it did, only that her pulse took up a thrum in her veins that rattled a rhythm she yearned for, but felt just out of reach.

She hadn’t meant fighting _him_ , just —

“In general, I mean. You know — instead of running?”

He didn’t let go, choosing instead to graze a thumb across her fingers, turning her palm just so as to raise her knuckles to his mouth.

The sound he made, so close to a growl, set her lekku tingling once more. Contemplative, he pressed his lips to her skin, lingering there a moment too long.

“This is our compact, then,” he purred.

She tugged free of him, her skin prickling with the disconnect as she stretched her hand at her side, feeling suddenly, desperately conflicted by his proximity. The thought to ease around him didn’t even cross her mind as she stepped into him, making to free herself of the heat of his body.

His fingers caught her hip, dancing over her waist as she found her stance — parrying him away with her arm guards and a confused look.

“Your feelings are a cocktail that can barely be contained.” He took a breath. “It’s heady.”

He leaned in, and Ahsoka, finding her heart hammering in mingled dread and curiosity, warmth pooling low in dire places that throbbed to aching in the midst of everything, didn’t understand at first —

Maul inhaled deeply, savouring.

“You might steel yourself for what’s to come.”

He drew away as suddenly, leaving her gasping to be released so quickly.

“Raise your protections further, perhaps. Reinforce your illusions that everything might return to normal, somehow. Deceive yourself if you must, until the lie becomes your new truth... but above all, break your chains. Cultivate a taste for it — this newfound freedom.”

The look his fixed her with was imperious; like some small, vicious victory could be lorded over her. It left her cold in the place where he’d touched her. Her nails cut into her sweating palms, a trickle of heat slithering down her spine.

“Until later, Lady Tano,” he purred, though surely the effect of that self-assurance wasn’t the reason that she sagged against the control panel as he left her.

Surely, there weren’t more defeats in store to leave her sick and quaking in the dim glow of the cockpit, alone with her confusion and the stoic silence of the Force.

—

She couldn’t be certain he ever slept.

In the dark of their vessel, there were times where Ahsoka might’ve sworn that she could feel his gaze resting on her from the darkened nooks and crannies where he did his utmost to offer her a wide berth. Without the Force to alert her, her defences tucked in so tightly to stop herself from feeling the loss of her comrades — from Rex — she found the shadows suspect.

That feeling lingered on the evening where she found him on the outskirts of her sleeping quarters, a bundle of cloth in his hands. He wore different vestments — nondescript and utilitarian; easy to overlook.

“When you’re ready to divest yourself of your remaining trappings.”

He left the bundle as he departed, but the ship was large and the sense that he lingered didn’t subside even as she ventured out to collect the parcel.

Different attire for a different time.

Her own clothes marked her for what she’d once been.

The change was a practicality, certainly, but frowning at the new garments, Ahsoka thought it might’ve been a kindness.

The streak of starshine out the windows marked no progress — only an uninterrupted line moving forwards too rapidly to measure.

She didn’t close the door, retreating just inside, unable to call him back. Unwilling, maybe.

Struggling with the opposing needs for company and the struggle of wanting to negotiate her feelings alone, she divested herself of her armour, each piece hitting the floor as she stepped out of that old life. Her clothes littered the durasteel like a moulted skin.

Jaw tight, breathing hard through grit teeth, she stood there a moment longer, feeling the warming glow of Maul’s gaze through the dark.

She didn’t cover herself, baring to him all that remained when the trappings were taken away.

He said nothing, but the caress of his pride might’ve been the graze of fingers across her shoulders; a knuckle down an arm; an appreciative huff of breath into her ear, raising goosebumps.

When she looked back into the corridor, only the blink of sensors remained — not the gleam of his stare as she’d thought.

Ahsoka wrapped her arms herself, shivering against his retreat.

—

“Don’t let me stop you.”

He was brooding again, contemplating a star chart with an idle determination to drive her mad.

With one leg draped over the armrest, he rolled his head on his shoulders, tipping his face back to greet her with a grimace and a grunt.

“Dathomir,” he repeated. “Is quite nearly a dead star. No one will think to look for us there.”

She folded her arms across her chest, hovering and unwilling to sit down as if that spelled concession.

“We’ll be trapped without supplies,” she countered. “Without fuel. Without another recourse.”

He sank further into his frown. “One might be inclined to believe that you’d find yourself unappreciative of the company.”

She stepped in front of him, prickling. “I don’t want to hide.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

She jutted her chin. Shook her head.

“Devising a plan? A ploy?” He pressed, “Regrouping?”

Yes, all of those things, she wanted to argue. The lie of it must have shown on her face, because Maul smirked, his prosthetic foot punctuating his victory as he set it to the floor and rose to meet her.

“Ah,” he murmured. “There’s that fire. I was growing concerned that you’d all but snuffed it out.”

“We should find help,” she countered. “We should be looking for allies.”

“The dust has barely settled and you’d draw us into the open for a scrape and a scuffle — two souls against an Empire.” His eyes glittered. “I must have been mistaken with regards to your emotional stability, because surely there are other ways to divert ourselves than attempted suicide.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Excuse me?”

He leaned in. “Unspent, uncontrolled energy. You’re prickling with it.”

She was going to go insane, breathing the same air as Maul for much longer.

A sizzling irritation swam through her limbs, turning her jittery, her clothes uncomfortable against her own skin. 

“We need to do something about this.”

“Indeed,” he said, but that one word was loaded with something dangerous that left her shifting and awkward as he found the measure to compose himself, smirking in a way that suggested he understood her better than she did herself. He folded his hands behind his back, ever the diplomat.

She would deduce later that small act of deference was to allow her the choice to act.

Which, of course, made what happened next entirely her fault —

“Perhaps,” he murmured, taking one step too close to lean into her, his tone turning conspiratorial — too intimate to be comfortable. Her fingers twitched, her whole body humming at his proximity. “The desire to self-destruct might be tempered with something edged with hostility, but not so wholly lethal. My Lady.”

The words dripped from his mouth in a purr so self-assured that she shuddered, feeling the weight of his suggestion as it plummeted to the bottom of her belly and bloomed between her legs, hot and aching, leaving her shivery and then, enraged as his meaning struck home.

Gaze half-lidded, he drew back just enough that Ahsoka had time to process her fingers wrapping into his tunic — Maul’s eyes widening in surprise at her response — a mere beat between her heart hammering her ribs, the flood of endorphins dilating her pupils and spinning the world black and red, and cracking him soundly in the nose at a lurch with her forehead.

The control panel struck the back of her legs before she found herself shoved atop it, buttons depressing as he moved into her, hands clasping a wrist before she could strike him with a fist. He chuckled, shaking it off though his eyes watered, and she grabbed for him again —

This time, something sparked as his hips ran flush to hers to pin her back from doing further damage.

He caught her fist, squeezing, and the pop and sizzle of her firing nerves screamed as if awakened from the exertion. He bore down, pressing her back, and she bared her teeth in a rictus that rivalled his grin.

“Good,” he murmured, and her insides twisted in sick delight at the praise.

Locked together, breathing hard, she glared at him, and he leaned forward, his gaze lidded — the test of their strengths matched, though her muscles shook with the effort of fending him off.

“Is this what you imagined, Lady Tano?”

She bit out, “No,” and her fist slackened. He caught her wrist, looser, becoming a caress down her arm to draw her fingers against the bared skin nearest his clavicle. Their chests rose and fell together, the understanding that the cusp of something changed was a blade and the longer they lingered on the edge, the more precarious it became.

He tipped his head in silent invitation, his gaze falling to her mouth.

Her fingers eased from a fist to press against his palm.

Her body tightened, fighting it, but not stopping as his attention lighted on hers one last time.

Ahsoka crashed into his mouth at once, surging upwards, unencumbered as his hands slid from rib to hip, and then lower to lift her against him.

She groaned at the contact, her lips parting, and it was Maul who thrust into her mouth first —

Claiming. Opening her wider in a gesture that she mimicked with her legs. His kiss was warm and wet and full — almost too much and not enough at all as he gripped her chin, his tongue soothing where the bite of his fingers remained hard.

He hitched her hips forward, their tangled limbs an argument of sighs as he tore his mouth from hers and sank his teeth into the flesh beneath her jaw. Not hard. But hard enough to make her groan, goosebumps exploding into shivers. Head swimming, he rocked her into his hips, grinding into her, giving her the friction she so desperately fought for.

She tore at his tunic, ripping the fabric from the waistband of his pants, but Maul was more deliberate in his attack — finding the exact right position for his fingers against her ribs to make her quake before cupping her breast.

The fingers of his other hand found her throat. He didn’t squeeze — the gesture one of control, pressing enough to hold her in the place that he wanted her to be: far enough to see what he was doing to her body.

“Harder,” she strained, wanting it to hurt. Wanting to divert the pains she felt elsewhere —

He growled, “No, my dear.” But he caught her nipple between his thumb and first knuckle, giving her just an ounce of pressure through her shirt. Enough to make her breath hitch.

“I will not harm you,” he promised.

She sucked a breath through her teeth.

“Then not gentle.”

He closed the distance between them, smirking against her mouth.

“With pleasure.”

He released her throat, the span of his hand sliding down her front, fingers locking into the v of fabric and pulling at it with a sharp jerk so that it tore.

Eyes half-lidded, he sank his teeth into the pillow of her lower lip, holding her in place as his hands worked to cup her ass — to raise her leg to his hip — soothing, strong gestures that warmed her core despite the rough manipulation of the Force.

She felt the fabric fall away, Maul’s touch elsewhere — worshipful almost as he kissed down her throat, lifting her breasts to his mouth by pressing into her shoulder blades.

Ahsoka’s head fell back, the graze of a horn so close to her jugular she shivered.

He laved at her, working her nipples into stiffened peaks, only to swallow them, one at a time, into the heat of his mouth. The wetness left behind as he moved from one to the other left her shivering in the cold shuttle air, her discomfort lessened only as he drew her against his body, the heat of him feverish by contrast.

“My lady,” he murmured, and her eyes fluttered open to find his preoccupations moving to the inside of her arm, her wrist, watching as he worshiped her skin only to pull her fingers into his mouth, sucking them as his hands divested her of her belt.

Loose and hot, she fumbled for him only for Maul to grip her wrist, settling it to the dash at her side.

“Raise your hips, Lady Tano.”

He stepped back, to her confusion.

Maul raised an eyebrow, and she, breathing hard but confused, complied with the barest hesitation.

He watched the whole time, predatory, as he used the Force to peel away her leggings, her boots dropping to the ground before her. With a flick of his wrist, her clothing swept to the side as he stalked back and forth before her, shedding his tunic, his arm guards — baring the tattoos of his torso to her with so much sculpted muscle coiled beneath it.

Maul bared his teeth — taking her in as she shivered in the chill.

“I wish to see you, my dear,” he said, and Ahsoka, breathing hard, her heart hammering her ribs like a caged thing, understood at once that not even being naked was enough to someone who wanted all of her, in every conceivable way.

Maul wore his hunger like a starving man.

There was no hesitation in his command:

“Spread your knees for me.”

Skin pebbling, her arousal slick and warm between her thighs, she sucked in the tiniest of breaths, unable to look at the way he feasted on her form from afar.

She almost whimpered at the presence of him in the Force: Maul was a Titan, unwavering in his dominance, and though she struggled with the urge to fight his will, she gave herself to the command with flagging strength.

As she eased her legs apart for him, he sucked in the smallest of breaths.

“Oh,” he murmured, devouring her with his eyes. “But I do love to see your appreciation, slicked against your skin.”

He breathed deeply, approaching her.

“Would that I might worship at your altar, my Lady — my Queen.”

He sank to his knees, and Ahsoka shook.

He hadn’t yet touched her, but she might’ve puddled before him for the way his gaze stole across her flesh. Maul made fists of his hands against his knees, straining against the urge to reach for her.

It became a struggle to remain still for him, the way he devoured her with his eyes.

“Magnificent.”

She didn’t mean to whimper, but with her legs shuddering as they were, the muscles in her abdomen struggling to hold her in place for wanting to crush her to him, the sound she made might’ve been a keen:

“P-please.”

The gleam of his eyes cut her to the quick, and gently, she felt the barest press of his fingers at her ankles.

Spots danced behind her eyes.

“Breathe, Lady Tano.”

Maul’s hands drifted across her skin with the lightest and most unbearable of caresses as he placed himself before her — a loyal servant, tensed and at the ready. Hungry, still. Possessive and proud.

“You’re trembling,” he murmured.

She was.

Her mouth was dry.

Her body screaming.

“You’re fighting not to seize what’s right before you. How noble.”

He lifted himself, hands on either sides of her legs on the dash, and placed his tongue against her lekku, those yellowed eyes turned to watch her as he dragged it upwards, sending her spasming.

Forcing her hands to her sides, she could feel the brush of his trousers against the insides of her knees.

Warmth puddled between her legs, the perfume of her desire heady.

Maul withdrew, lowering himself to his knees before her.

Tracing the markings from her thighs to her hips with his fingertips, raising the skin in shivers and goosebumps. He pressed his mouth to the juncture where her thigh met her hip, his thumbs making their own cadence of her blood. Knuckles brushing at the backs of her knees, he drew her legs wider — his breath keeping her warm with a kiss to her navel, her ribs.

She fought to keep from folding over onto him, even as he pressed her back from the sternum to leave her shivering and exposed at his exploration.

She burned.

He turned his eyes, gold and gleaming, up to hers, hands resting on her thighs. Settled between her legs as he was, the intimacy of his nearness warming her, Ahsoka fought not to squirm. Those were heavy fingers, she thought — calloused but deft, so accustomed to wielding a weapon, yet tender upon finding flesh.

On a breath, Maul placed a kiss to the inside of her knee, watching for hesitation — for her withdrawal.

She fisted her hands against the dash, willing her limbs to keep from quivering at the heat of his mouth. Tension curled low in her belly the longer he lingered, patient and powerful, and thrumming with those unsaid things that passed between them in the dark. 

“One might kneel without promising servitude, but indeed my lady, I would serve you -- if only you wished it.”

On a shuddering exhale, she begged him, “Serve me, then.”

And Maul rose as if knighted to his task, watching her as he dragged his tongue against her thighs to the juncture where she quivered for him —

Hot and wet, the bud of her sex throbbing. She bucked to meet his mouth, a gasp escaping her as he clasped her wrists down to the hard, durasteel surface.

Gone was the delicate handling he’d teased her with, his nose nudging into her folds, his tongue laving into her, spreading her wider, angling deeper with each stroke as if to drink of her.

She seized, frozen with sensation, her body wound as tight as a spring at the feel of his face buried between her thighs. The graze of his horns bit tightly into her flesh, but Ahsoka found quickly that pleasure edged with a little pain made her throw back her head and gasp. It made her drape a leg over his shoulder, and then the other. It made her squeeze, just a little, as he worked her to a tautness that had her grasping for him — palms grazing those sharp edges.

He wrestled her bud, the flat of his tongue seeking, rubbing in wide, hard thrusts that sent her crashing backward.

Grasping her hips, he jerked her forward into his mouth, pressing her wider so that he might push deeper into the feeling.

Ahsoka’s eyes fluttered open to see him pull back, Maul’s chin slick with the spill of her desire, a thumb brushing at her clit with a careless, rough flick that dragged a cry from her chest.

He bared his teeth in a grin of triumph, eyes lidded to watch her expression as he rose, pressing two fingers between her folds in one swift, sharp stroke to the knuckles.

Maul leaned over her, the swell of his body an anchor to cling to as he let her reach for him at last, nails clawing as he withdrew with hands and pumped her once, twice, and his thumb kneaded her sensitized bud once more.

He licked the juices from his chin. “Succulent, my lady. You taste simply divine.”

“Kriff —“ she managed.

But he was _fucking_ her, she realized — that distant, hallucinatory understanding as impossible as the taste of herself on his lips, biting at her mouth for her to open to him, hammering into her at a rhythm that blew stars behind her eyes.

“There’s no one to hear you,” he promised, jerking her into his hand, his cadence unfaltering as he drove into her to the heel of his palm. He switched fingers, adding a third into the mix. “Scream for me, my Lady.”

She bared her teeth instead, and he all but tore her off the console.

Ahsoka gave a rough shout to find herself in Maul’s arms as he collected her against his body, his tongue finding hers as he pulled her from her perch with three strong steps. In his hands, he cupped her buttocks, her hips fit into his own, and she felt for the first time —

“Maul!”

But his answering grin should have been warning enough.

He devoured her, skin slick with sweat, sliding between them as he let her legs drop to either side of his hips.

Kissing her, he lifted her chin up to delve his tongue into her mouth, her juices mixing with the smoky taste of him. She melted into him, looser now, but unsatisfied, still as her fingers travelled over the lines criss-crossing his body, settling at his waist but not stopping there. Her exploration carried her hands over the peaks and valleys of his stomach muscles, warmth spreading through her at how he stiffened and sighed. He ripped from her mouth, licking his lips in satisfaction.

Hesitating, he slanted his gaze down at her, and pressed into her hip with a heat and hardness that left her confused.

Satisfaction veiled his expression.

“Maul —” Ahsoka started.

His hand found her throat, clasping her as he moved her against him, turning her bodily as his mouth found her lekku once more as he canted her hips into his lap. Her eyes rolled back at the course of his mouth, travelling down the sensitive flesh, suckling as he went. Sinking teeth into her shoulder too briefly, she processed only the sensation of his bulk behind her: hot and hard and unyielding, hands tracing her sides and rising to cup her breasts. She gasped as he squeezed and released her. 

“This is how I will end you,” he murmured into her ear, walking her forwards and bending her from the waist so that her chest pressed into the dash.

“A crumpled, mewling mess — spread wide and wanting, spilling blasphemies and promises and hoarse from shouting your pleasure, over and over.”

A hand rested on her ass, and though she tried to crane around to see the slip and shuffle of cloth, his fingers clasped the back of her neck as he kicked her legs father apart.

Bared to him, unable to see what he was doing, she swallowed thickly — her limbs trembled from the strain of being splayed before him, his nails raking furrows in her thigh as he considered everything she was allowing him to take.

Groaning at the sudden contact, his fingers slipped into her once more. They left her in a wet flick, a brush against her before he took all sensation away for a beat too long to hold her suspended in anticipation, shivering and too hot, her insides beating a heartbeat through her pussy as she clenched on air.

Ahsoka made a noise that was almost a petulant whimper, and then — pressure at her core. A sudden, swift sheathing that left her aching and full, near almost to the point where it was too much. She gasped, striking the panel with a fist, her air snuffed from her lungs in surprise.

She cried out, her body arching upward as he withdrew, and slammed back to the hilt.

The cold press of his cybernetics against the back of her thighs shocked her into writhing, the sensation at odds with the heat and firmness inside her —

He leaned forward, pressing his chest into her back and promising in silken tones as he began to thrust her into the console, “I would hear you scream my name before this is done, my Lady, my desire. Let a fool know he’s found worth through your pleasure.”

“F-fuck —”

“Language, my lady.”

“P-please —”

“Please what, Lady Tano?”

“I hate it when you call me that.”

“But you love the way it makes you feel.”

She did, damn him.

He held her by the hips as he purred into her ear, grinding her forward, brushing every over-sensitized inch of her. He squeezed her flesh, moulding her into him as he thrust with a singular, vicious purpose. As if he’d been built for her.

“Please, Maul —”

He’d wound her so tightly she thought she might sob. She clenched on his length, scrabbling for his wrists, trying to — trying to get him to the right spot.

Maul growled an obscenity into her skin, and it occurred to her that —

“You can feel this?”

He snarled, “My enhancements are not so prohibitive as to deprive me of enjoyment. I can feel you as surely —”

Something rattled in the dash. She gasped.

“As —“

She shuddered at the ferocity of his next thrust.

“You —”

He grunted.

“Can —“

Her insides throbbed to life.

“Feel —“

The slap of metal and silicone at odds with the grip of his gloves.

“Me.”

Ahsoka howled — a guttural sound to match the forces at war inside her, his name caught behind her teeth.

Maul shuddered over her, his pace shuddering briefly, as if release threatened.

A viscous triumph tore through her at that, and Ahsoka pressed back into him, squeezing him for all he was worth as if it might halt his progress.

Maul groaned, his forehead touching the skin between her shoulder blades, and wrenched her leg up to set her knee on the console. It slotted him deeper, but he maintained his punishing pace — each thrust shorter, quicker, and more brutal than the last.

Everything inside her coiled tighter, darkness threatening behind her eyes. She couldn’t breathe for how badly she needed to —

His fingers found her clit, his mouth her neck, and he bit the soft flesh he found there with a savage sort of determination to make her cry out.

She did, then, the depth of his thrusts striking that none-so-oft-touched place inside her. He slapped at her clit, and Ahsoka’s mouth opened in a silent “oh” of surprise as the tension snapped taut and exploded with the viciousness of abandon.

She gasped a breath, stars bursting across her vision, the flood of pleasure whipping out of her and leaving her throbbing, taut across the control panel, and managed, keening, “ _Maul!_ ”

It felt — oh, but Maul hadn’t stopped yet. Each thrust dragged ripples of pleasure from her, leaving her babbling, incoherent with the flood of sensation that spun through her in her orgasm’s aftermath.

Her knees buckled, only the ferocity of his body slapping against hers as he roared his release kept her upright.

He slowed, his grip loosening. Laughter, then.

She ached with such a delicious weakness that she thought the Force itself sighed around her, sated. Puddled across the dash, he chuckled over her — a possessive, contented sound that caressed the line of her back as he drew her into his arms.

Ahsoka’s eyes fluttered open as he slid from her, and cradled in Maul’s embrace, he regarded her with an appreciation that warmed her despite her weakened limbs.

“Maul —” she managed, but he’d lifted her by the legs, cradling her to him.

The aftershocks ebbed, but didn’t abate. She swam in it, floating as if in a sea of stars, suspended. Some temporary ease caressed her, and it was a moment before she rolled her cheek into his chest, understanding:

She felt him, then, his walls subsided.

Not soft, but not at war either —

Maul’s consciousness brushed hers. She thought he felt like a darkened, cloud-filled sky, churning with the promise of a storm yet unbroken. Beautiful. Impossible. Electric.

“My lady,” he said, pressing a kiss to her temple. “When I saw you tumbling from ship to ship, racing down your friend, I thought not for your safety, but to spare you only the hardship of choosing one path over another without sparing a breath to consider that perhaps,” he sighed, walking from the cockpit towards their sleeping quarters, “all roads eventually converge.”

She swallowed, a tightness closing her throat that he should offer her an explanation now, but then again — what better time was there?

Ahsoka draped an arm over his shoulders to better see him.

A small, pained frown worried the spot between Maul’s eyes. She thumbed at it, trying to smooth it for him.

He frowned at her, even as she pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“Are we victims, then?” she asked him. “Blighted by destiny?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. He narrowed his eyes, having his own words twisted back at him.

“For someone who doesn’t put their faith in the Force, it sure seems like you want to make a compelling argument for it,” she said.

He glanced at her, his frown deepening as he took her to his bed.

“Perhaps,” he murmured. “Perhaps only allowing oneself to drown in their own inevitability allows one the opportunity to save themselves.”

She narrowed her eyes at him as he shouldered through the doorway to her room.

“You seduced me,” she surmised.

A small smirk played around his mouth as he side-eyed her, a double-entendre buried there for her to find. “But I did not let you _fall_.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/octobertownie) and [Tumblr](http://octobertown.tumblr.com) if you'd like updates or a progress check or whatever else.


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